Caroline Voaden MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 19 Jun 2025 · Water Company Fines: Water Restoration Fund · Hansard source

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  5. If he will make it his policy to redistribute fines levied against water companies since November 2023 to the water restoration fund.

• 19 Jun 2025 · Water Company Fines: Water Restoration Fund · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for her answer on the water restoration fund, but it would be good to know when it will come back into action. A Liberal Democrat freedom of information request found that Ofwat has failed to force water companies to pay any fines for sewage discharge cases since 2021, despite sewage being pumped into waterways for over 3.6 million hours last year alone. Meanwhile, water company bosses earned a collective total of £20 million in the 2023-24 financial year. The water restoration fund provided valuable funds to local communities to improve water quality and river health. When will the Government stand up to the water companies, make them pay for the damage they are inflicting on our environment, and ringfence this money for communities, so that they can protect and improve their waterways?

• 19 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  We absolutely agree that it is preferable to have the perpetrator in court to face justice and hear their sentence. However, I listened carefully to the evidence of Baroness Newlove, who said that we want to avoid this becoming a spectacle and all about the offender. The sentencing hearing is the moment when the victim hears what sentence the offender will get for the crime that they have been subjected to. It is about the victim, and justice for them; it should not become some circus sideshow for the offender to create havoc in the courtroom. Does the hon. Member agree that there is a point at which it is not beneficial to bring the offender into court to create such a sideshow?

• 19 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister agree that somebody who has been convicted of a serious child sexual offence against a child for whom they do not have parental responsibility still poses a danger to their own child?

• 19 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman explain what “grossly disproportionate” means?

• 18 Jun 2025 · Businesses in Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. As we know, rural businesses are the backbone of our communities, but they are being asked to compete with one hand tied behind their back. Across South Devon, local entrepreneurs—farmers, shopkeepers, tradespeople, producers and publicans—are working tirelessly to keep their communities vibrant, providing jobs, supporting local supply chains and bringing people together, but the odds are stacked against them. One of the most urgent and unacceptable barriers that rural businesses face is poor broadband and mobile phone coverage. In some parts of my constituency, people cannot send an email without it crashing halfway, and taking card payments is a gamble. How can a small rural business compete in a digital economy if it cannot get online? Poor coverage is not just an inconvenience; it is a direct threat to livelihoods. I will also address the way in which the Government are implementing the extended producer responsibility scheme, which is hitting local hospitality businesses hard. I welcome the Government’s efforts to make manufacturing more sustainable, but that must not come at the cost of adding further financial uncertainty for small businesses that are already under pressure. The New Inn, a historical pub in the small village of Moreleigh in my constituency, has been informed by the brewery that supplies it that prices will increase by 7p per bottle of beer and cider and up to 21p per bottle of wine. The brewery will not deal with the bottles afterwards, however, so the pub also has to pay for the disposal of the glassware. The proprietor said: “in effect we are paying twice…The hospitality trade is being unfairly targeted by this government. Trading is becoming increasingly difficult. After our business just surviving Covid—we are still paying the bounce back loan—then being hit with the Employer’s NI hike and now this, I am beginning to wonder if after 14 years it’s really worth it any more.” These pubs are not major polluters; they are local employers and community hubs. They are vital to the social and economic life of our villages and towns. More than just pubs, they are third spaces and social hubs that are vital to community life. Yet under this scheme they are treated the same as massive supermarket chains. That is unfair, out of touch and economically harmful.

• 18 Jun 2025 · Businesses in Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  In fact, in the spending review, the whole of rural England was given a seventh of the money for transport plans that was given to urban areas. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is not sufficient to sustain and improve the rural bus transport network as much as we need?

• 17 Jun 2025 · Pharmacies · Hansard source

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  2. What steps he is taking to support rural pharmacies.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Pharmacies · Hansard source

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  I recently visited Modbury pharmacy, where owner Phil Dawes highlighted the challenges facing small rural pharmacies. He explained how the current funding model does not take into account the lower footfall and limited referral rates that are common in rural areas. We know that if a pharmacy in a small market town closes, it can cause extreme difficulties for people to access advice and medicines, particularly where there is little or no public transport and they have to go a long way. Will the Government consider introducing rural exceptions or adjusted funding thresholds so that we can keep community pharmacies open?

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Are you confident that you have the resources and capacity to give the officers involved in the victim contact scheme the training they require in domestic abuse, abuse and traumatic sexual violence and their particular effects on the victims they will deal with through this helpline? Chris Jennings: Yes. We are very used to dealing with the impacts of all those sorts of crimes in our world. It is the bread and butter of what we do. We will need to make sure that we give people the appropriate skills and training and do not throw them in at the deep end, but we are well used to doing that and we have the skills to do it. I have no reason not to be confident that we can make that work. Kim Thornden-Edwards: We are also building on a service that is delivering good outcomes currently. In 2024, so very recently, His Majesty’s inspectorate of probation, which provides our external scrutiny, found our statutory victim work to be outstanding for three of our regional inspections. We also had an inspection in 2023 of general victim services that found the services to be good. We are building on a good level of service delivery currently and victim liaison officers who are doing a good job. We are very concerned to ensure that their training remains relevant and pertinent to the specific issues that the victims who use our service are often involved in. There is dedicated training for domestic abuse. We are also concerned, as the service, and particularly the helpline, expands and extends, to ensure that those who deliver the helpline will be involved in the most appropriate training, including domestic abuse and a trauma-informed approach. We will build in those training requirements at every juncture and for every member of staff involved in the scheme.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I would like to talk about the measures to change parental responsibility. Could you tell us why the provision in the Bill applies only to people who have been convicted of offences against their own children and not serious sexual offences against other children? Alex Davies-Jones: I am happy to clarify the Government’s thinking behind why we have kept this measure quite tight. It is important to say at the outset that there are other mechanisms to remove parental responsibility from offenders and perpetrators, and those mechanisms will still remain, such as the family court process. What this measure does is quite novel: it removes parental responsibility at the point of conviction in the criminal courts, and it is an untested measure in doing so. It is important that we can see the impact this will have on victims, survivors and, first and foremost, children. It is important to stress that perpetrators will be able to appeal this through the family courts, and they will be able to apply for legal aid through the system as a result of this. Therefore we feel that, at this point in time, it is important to keep such a novel approach quite tight. That is why we have chosen to restrict it to offenders who have been committed of any sexual offence against their own children and been sentenced to four years or more. We are not saying that we would not be open to expanding it in the future, but, as I think we heard quite clearly throughout the evidence sessions today, we must consider the impact this could have on the family court system as it currently stands. The family court is under immense pressure. Sadly, another element of the criminal justice system that we inherited from the previous Government is the immense pressure from the backlog. You also heard about the issues that currently stand within the family court, and how many victims and survivors, particularly victims of domestic abuse, feel that it retraumatises them. I would not want to put any other victims through that process, and that is why the Government have chosen to target this measure, as a starting point, at that specific cohort. We feel it is a novel approach; it has never been done this way, and so we have chosen to be quite specific with it.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I think you have answered my follow-up question, which was whether you think that if somebody has committed a serious sexual offence against a child, they should not have parental responsibility for any child. Alex Davies-Jones: There is a mechanism available to remove parental responsibility via that route, currently through the family courts. I am aware that that would require the other parent to take the perpetrating parent to the family court, and I have been made aware that it is not easy to do that, but that route is available. That is why we have chosen to keep this measure quite tight at present.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q If the four years is reduced on appeal, would that measure still stand? Alex Davies-Jones: I would have to come back to you to clarify that point, but I am happy to do so.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q One more question on that: why did you settle on four years? Alex Davies-Jones: Because there are sadly quite a lot of sex offenders in this country, so extending the measure to any sex offender could bring waves of people into scope. We are not saying that that is not appropriate, but this is a novel approach and those perpetrators can have parental responsibility stripped through other means. I am very cautious about putting extra strain on the family courts, given the issues that they face. At present, we want to keep it to any sexual offence where the perpetrator gets four years or more in prison and it is against their own child, in order to keep that child safe from the perpetrator.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q To follow up on the previous question, there are long-standing concerns about staffing levels in the Probation Service. As the Bill will bring more victims under the auspices of the victim contact scheme, more victims might use it. You sound pretty confident that you will be able to manage that, but if you are already facing staffing challenges, how do you think that will look if a lot more victims suddenly want to use that scheme and helpline? Chris Jennings: We have staffing challenges in different ways in the Probation Service. Victim liaison officers are a particular group of staff that we recruit through a particular route. It is not the same route that we recruit probation officers through, and that is not the same route that we recruit unpaid work supervisors through. There are different role types within the service, and some of them are under more pressure than others. VLOs are not one of the areas where we are under most pressure, despite your description being absolutely true for some of the other areas. There is also a geographic spread of where we are under pressure operationally; it is not the same everywhere. Some places are very well resourced and some are less well resourced. Those combinations lead us to a place where we do not think that resourcing should be the thing that holds us back from making a success of this. Of course, we have to pay close attention to it, because if the numbers go up more than we anticipate, we will need to make sure that we resource that adequately, but we are not hugely worried about it at the moment. Kim Thornden-Edwards: The victim contact scheme is a discrete service, so we do not transfer staff across or expect people to do a multiple brief on it. It is a discrete service that we recruit to separately. Our recruitment of victim liaison officers has been on an upward trajectory over the last 10 months. The banding and grading, and therefore the salary, of victim contact officers also increased last year, so we anticipate that there will be further uptake in terms of recruitment. Across the Probation Service, most grades saw an increase over the last year, so we are generally on an upward trajectory for staffing. You may be familiar with the Lord Chancellor’s announcement that we will look to recruit a further 1,300 probation officer staff during this financial year. We anticipate continued significant growth of probation areas over the period of the spending review.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you for coming in to give evidence. In areas such as support for victims of sexual violence and rape, helplines have been closed down over the past few months and years because of a lack of funding. How confident are you that the funding and resources will be there to set this helpline up and keep it going further down the line? Clare Moody: I cannot comment on future spending and where that will go. We would share the view that resourcing matters for the helpline. The nature of services is that they generate demand. It is not just about services for the helpline; it is about wider victim services support. That is for funding decisions that are beyond my remit.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Are you confident that the helpline will give victims the information they need about the perpetrator? Will things be joined up enough for a national helpline to be able to answer a question that could come in from anywhere in the country? As far as I understand it, there will not be different helplines in different police areas. Genna Telfer: That is always a challenge. It is a challenge that we are trying to work through at the moment in terms of code compliance and how we share information through different agencies. There is a piece of work going on between policing, the MOJ and the CPS to try to work out how we align all our data—how we have the right people giving the right information at the right time, but also access to that data. The first thing is whether the data is right. There is a whole piece of work going on in the MOJ at the moment around data auditing and checking. The second thing is how the communication is happening. We have just launched a joint communications framework between policing and the CPS, which gives our witness care units practical examples of what they communicate and when. In future, we would like, potentially, to look beyond that to go into probation and expand it further. There is another piece of work ongoing around technology and how that could assist us to do some of this. That is subject to funding, because none of that comes cheap, but absolutely, the intention is to try to align that as much as possible. There will probably always be some gaps when you are transferring from one agency to another, but as much as we can, we are trying to join it up, so that the victim gets the right information, ideally from the right place.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q It sounds like quite a lot of work to do behind the scenes to make this function properly. Genna Telfer: Yes, absolutely.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q What impact do you think broadening the potential pool of prosecutors will have on the backlog in the court system? Sarah Hammond: It will enable us to recruit more. As I have said, it is quite a competitive market out there. There will be more people eligible to become Crown prosecutors. That will include people who are qualified under the provisions relating to the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives. We also have a number of associate prosecutors who have worked for the CPS for many years and have great experience. However, I do not think that is the complete solution to it. While we can possibly recruit more Crown prosecutors, a system-wide approach is needed to tackle those backlogs and delays and give justice for victims.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q What measures to improve the situation around antisocial behaviour would you have liked to see in the Bill that are not in it? Rebecca Bryant: Funded universal support for victims of antisocial behaviour. It has been made clear by not only us but the previous panel that antisocial behaviour is a very broad church and often includes criminal activity, but it is not recorded as a crime. We use antisocial behaviour legislation, as it is under the current regime and as it will be in future with the Crime and Policing Bill, as that stands, for the use or threat of violence, for example. We all know that using or threatening violence is a crime, yet we use antisocial behaviour legislation to respond to it. It can involve drug dealing, cuckooing properties, criminal damage—all those things are crimes. If you are a victim of crime and you report it as a crime to the police, you will get an automatic offer of victim support. When you are dealing with an antisocial behaviour case, you might report it to the local authority or to a housing provider, and you do not get immediate access to victim support. We know from our own research and research from the Victims’ Commissioner, various different reports and colleagues like ASB Help that what supports a victim is having a named person who can support them through the process. That person can guide them through often very complex and difficult situations in relation to taking legal action, or if the perpetrator is vulnerable and has multiple issues around mental health, drugs and alcohol, and the significant delays in the civil justice system mean that the case may go on for a long time. We need specialist victim support that is universal and independent. I should stress the independence because, often, when a complainant makes a complaint to a housing provider and a local authority, they will be part of a caseload of many. They will be given some support and guidance, and some people have specialist training to do that, but we would seriously support having an independent specialist to provide that kind of support—for example, Victim Support, which is commissioned and funded. It is very much a postcode lottery at the moment. There are some police and crime commissioners in the country who fund specialist ASB victim support, but they are few and far between. It really is a postcode lottery as to what you get where you live. That is what I think is missing. Charlotte Hamilton-Kay: I absolutely agree with that. We can talk about victims of a single instance of minor crime, which I do not say easily; it is the criminal version of “low level”. If, for example, someone smashed your plant pots on your front doorstep, that is a crime and you are entitled to support for it. But if you have been suffering sleepless nights for 12 months because a neighbour has kept you awake constantly, you are losing your job because you are falling asleep at work, and you have experienced a constant campaign, there is no one there. If there was a statutory agency to provide support, that could be life-altering for some people. It is a very important thing that we continue to campaign for. With the best will in the world, a lot of the measures are a great step forward for victims of antisocial behaviour, but if we do not allocate the resources and ensure that the training and experience is there for frontline practitioners, then we are only as good as our weakest link. We need to ensure that we support our frontline practitioners who work in the field of antisocial behaviour to get the job right. If they do not have the resources to do the job properly, they are not going to be able to. If they have not got the training and the knowledge to understand the vulnerabilities and the different caveats of antisocial behaviour, they are not going to be able to do the job properly. That is immediately where we fall down. Unfortunately, the buck will stop with them, so we are dutybound to make sure they have adequate support to do it right.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q As a police and crime commissioner, would you like to see increased funding for other victim services? Clare Moody: As a police and crime commissioner, I am always going to ask for increased funding.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Which areas of the Bill, if any, do you think will pose challenges for the Crown Prosecution Service? Sarah Hammond: As always, there is a collective challenge when a Bill becomes law just to work out how things will work in practice and how implementation will work. Take the restriction on parental responsibility. It will be important for the CPS to work with the Government, police and local authorities to obtain the relevant information about evidence of parental responsibility and put that before a judge to make the decision without causing any further delays in the system. Once the Bill becomes law, it is a case of working through some of the processes to make sure that the implementation is smooth and we have those clear processes in place.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Rebecca, you talked about situations in which there is a complex mixture of housing and mental health issues, and possibly drugs and alcohol, and the housing association or local authority struggles to move the person on because it is not clear where they would go. Do you think the agencies involved have the tools and resources they need to comply with the Bill in respect of the Victims’ Commissioner? Rebecca Bryant: I would say that the vast majority of local authorities and housing providers up and down the country resource their response to antisocial behaviour, but there has been a significant impact on that since 2008, with austerity and the cuts that have happened across local authorities. I believe that the toolkit itself is strong. There is a mixture of early intervention and prevention, which we absolutely know work. Around 75% of complaints around antisocial behaviour are resolved first time. When we are talking about taking cases to court, we are only talking about a small minority of all the complaints. There is something there about us understanding the real picture of antisocial behaviour in the country. A million incidents of antisocial behaviour were reported to the police last year, but our YouGov survey suggests that over 50% of people do not report antisocial behaviour, so imagine doubling that number to 2 million, and then adding on top the incidents recorded by housing providers and local authorities: we are probably looking at more like 4 million or 5 million incidents of antisocial behaviour. It is a really significant problem; it is pernicious and causes great damage to communities and individuals alike. There are certain things that we strongly feel should happen. We did some work with the all-party parliamentary group a couple of years ago, looking into the complexity of antisocial behaviour. We made a recommendation that there should be a pilot for a specialist housing court that could look at the complexity around antisocial behaviour. You are asking an ASB officer to be an enforcement person, a mediator, a victim support person, a mental health expert and a social worker. We recognise that people who perpetrate antisocial behaviour can often be victims themselves and have had traumatic experiences—adverse childhood experiences—in their lives, which might be the root cause of their antisocial behaviour. We need to have something like a specialist court, and we need the judiciary who look at antisocial behaviour to be trained to understand the complexity, because we often find that judges are not necessarily trained in antisocial behaviour when they look at complex cases. The resources required are wide. It is about not just local authorities and housing providers but the community safety partnership, because we know that a partnership response is what resolves antisocial behaviour. It is not about one single agency, and it is certainly not just within the auspices of the police.

• 17 Jun 2025 · Victims and Courts Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Do you not have any concerns about the quality of the service if you are widening the pool to people with other qualifications? Sarah Hammond: There is a balance between ensuring that we widen the service and not letting professional standards drop. We have a very comprehensive induction and training programme for Crown prosecutors. They have a 12-week induction programme when they join us. For those who join us who perhaps do not have experience of criminal law or have stepped out of criminal law for a while, there is also a separate course that serves as a refresher into the basic principles of criminal law. I am happy that there are some safeguards and training in there to ensure that prosecutors are of the standard we require.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Farmed Animals: Cages and Crates · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank the Petitions Committee for calling this important debate and the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell) for introducing it. The call to end the cage age of animal farming is clear. It comes not just from Parliament and politicians but from the public, nowhere more so than in my constituency. More people have signed the petition to end the use of cages and crates for farmed animals in South Devon than in any other constituency in the country. That is a powerful message from a rural farming community, which is demanding a future built on compassion, not cruelty. I thank the 513 people from South Devon who signed the petition. I urge the Government to keep their promise and finally take action to end the cage age of animal farming, not through vague pledges or delayed consultations but with a clear strategy delivered within this Parliament. Farrowing crates and other cruel confinement practices belong to the past. They cause immense suffering and deny animals, including the thousands of birds kept in cages for so-called sport, basic freedoms and dignity. In 2025, that is simply unacceptable. The Liberal Democrats have a long-standing record of standing up for animals. We have consistently supported stronger penalties for animal cruelty and higher welfare standards in farming. In government, we put in place a ban on battery cages for laying hens. I would like to see that ban extended to all cages but, as others have rightly said, that must be done carefully and in consultation with farmers and producers. For too long, we have been pushing the Government to launch a consultation into the use of farrowing crates for pigs, and to end the use of cages for farm animals. Our farmers are key to delivering that future. We know they care deeply about animal welfare, but they have been badly let down: betrayed by trade deals that undercut our high welfare standards, failed by poorly designed and delayed subsidy schemes, and denied the workforce and funding they need to thrive. To make these changes to caged animal farming, we must give farmers the support they need to transition. Let us talk about that support, because the numbers are frankly outrageous. The Government are spending £67.5 billion on defence, or more than 5% of total public spending, while the entire DEFRA budget languishes at just £7.4 billion—barely 0.6%. Farming itself receives just £2.4 billion, or a meagre 0.2% of the national budget. To put that in perspective, all DEFRA spending—not just for farming but for the environment, food and rural affairs—adds up to just 11% of what we spend on defence. Food security is part of our national security, but how can we claim to prioritise food security, rural livelihoods or animal welfare with numbers like that? Farming takes the largest share of DEFRA’s budget, but it is nearly one third of a shockingly small pie. Meanwhile, the programmes meant to support the future of farming, improve animal welfare and restore our natural environment, including the sustainable farming incentive, countryside stewardship and landscape recovery, have been hit with a £100 million cut—cuts in the middle of a climate crisis, cuts while farmers struggle to meet the higher standards that we are demanding with fewer resources, cuts when public demand for ethical farming has never been stronger. The Liberal Democrats stand with our farmers and our animals. We are calling for an extra £1 billion in the farming budget to support higher welfare standards, proper training and workforce investment. We will keep fighting to ensure no food can be imported or sold in the UK if it is produced in a way that would be illegal here.